WAGE news

WAGE Page Fall 2014

Thursday, September 04, 2014

AAUW to Lead $tart $mart and Work $mart to Make Significant Impact on the Gender Wage Gap

For six years, AAUW and The WAGE Project have successfully collaborated to expand $tart $mart from 31 workshops in 2008 to now more than 740 $tart $mart workshops at 336 colleges, community colleges and universities across the country. $tart $mart currently has a presence in 49 states, with more than 1,100 facilitators trained to lead workshops. In these highly interactive workshops, 20-40 women participants at a time gain the tools of salary negotiation and the confidence to negotiate to get paid fairly. To date, the programs have reached roughly 20,000 college women on campuses. In late 2013, AAUW approached WAGE with an offer to acquire $tart $mart and Work $mart. AAUW proposed to increase the frequency and number of these workshops to reach 200,000 women-- a scale WAGE believes could markedly impact the gender wage gap. Since the mission of The WAGE Project is to eliminate the gender wage gap, we are excited to announce that WAGE and AAUW have agreed to a fair and wise transfer of these workshops to AAUW leadership.

The WAGE Project’s two staff, Annie Houle and Dorrie Sieburg, have become AAUW staff to continue the same level of incredible expertise for $tart $mart. Dr. Evelyn Murphy, founder of The WAGE Project and designer of these workshops, will serve as a consultant to AAUW during the transition of Work $mart.

In announcing this transaction, AAUW Executive Director and CEO Linda D. Hallman, CAE said: “We have seen the contribution these workshops can make to the paychecks of young women starting their working lives. Our members are eager to deliver the workshops throughout the country. Tapping the energy and commitment of our 170,000 members and supporters, AAUW intends to lead American women to wage equity.”

Annie Houle, until recently the WAGE National Director of Campus and Community Initiatives, reflected on the impact on young campus women in $tart $mart workshops, “I’ve watched thousands of young women’s faces light up when they realize that with smart preparation for salary discussions they feel confident that they can negotiate to get paid fairly.”

Dorrie Sieburg, $tart $mart program coordinator, looked ahead optimistically adding “Everyday when I talk with AAUW members and campus staff, I hear how valuable these workshops are and the importance of reaching every young woman on campuses all over the country. I’m excited about how many more young women’s earning power we can enhance in the coming years.”

Evelyn Murphy, founder and President of The WAGE Project added, “Over the last six years, WAGE laid a foundation with these workshops to enable every young woman to begin and sustain her career being paid what she is worth. AAUW has the resources and commitment to grow this foundation into a pillar of gender wage equity never before experienced in America. We’re thrilled with the leadership AAUW has committed to this agenda.”

Evelyn Murphy Appointed by Mayor Walsh to the Boston Women’s Workforce CouncilIn July, the new Mayor of Boston, Martin Walsh, invited Evelyn Murphy to join his Women’s Workforce Council. He wrote “As mayor, one of the top priorities for me and my administration has been to work on addressing and closing the wage gap for women in Boston.” The Boston Women’s Workforce Council is crucial.. to the success of this ambitious yet attainable goal.”

Under the Mayor’s leadership, the Council is actively engaging employers in addressing the wage gap, both by examining their wage information to report on wage equity by industry and job titles in Metropolitan Boston and in promoting the exchange of best practices among employers. Over the past six years, Murphy has testified in both houses of Congress for passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA), one part of which would enable the collection of such wage data. However, the PFA lacks any such collaboration among employers as in this Boston model. While the Council’s efforts will likely take years to affect the wage gap in a significant manner, already other major cities are watching the Council’s experience and considering the possibly introducing a similar initiative.

Results from the Real Financial Literacy Program(RFLP)

Last year, Self Esteem Boston and WAGE developed the Real Financial Literacy Program (RFLP), a 10 hour series of workshops in confidence building and salary negotiation for unemployed women. With support from foundations, RFLP was offered at job centers in metropolitan Boston and Quincy, MA. and the Veterans Administration Hospital in Jamaica Plain, Boston.

The main purpose of the 10 hours of workshops is to give women the self confidence to advocate for their worth when seeking another job and the tools and techniques to negotiate to achieve a fair salary and job level. Here’s one highlight of the findings: at the outset, 1/3 of participants said they had no confidence that they could negotiate a fair salary, while 2/3 said they had a little or some confidence. Afterwards, 94% of the women felt confident they could negotiate a fair job level and salary—and this held true whether the woman was African American, white or another race, whatever her age, and whether she was long term or short term unemployed. The full report will soon be posted on the website.

Next

The WAGE Project appreciates your support for our work. Adding to this exciting initiative by the AAUW, WAGE’s work to eliminate the wage gap with public leaders including the Mayor of Boston, the Governor of Montana, Phoenix Mayor Stanton and City Councilwoman Gallego holds great promise. WAGE is committed to inspiring the combined efforts of the public, nonprofit and private sectors to finally eliminate America’s gender wage gap.

WAGE Page Summer 2014

Friday, June 27, 2014

Record Number of $tart $mart Workshops Delivered in Academic Year 2013-14

2013/14 has been a banner year for $tart $mart. Six new states were added to our roster. $tart $mart now covers 48 states with only Alaska and South Dakota remaining to get involved! 53 new colleges and universities introduced $tart $mart on their campuses. Thanks to the hard work of AAUW members, campus contacts and our $tart $mart Regional Field Managers, under the direction of Dorrie Sieburg, WAGE delivered over 220 workshops! We now have 81 schools holding three year licenses, ensuring opportunities for tens of thousands of women on those campuses to learn about the gender wage gap and how to negotiate for fair and equitable salaries.

Over 100 new people were trained as $tart $mart Facilitators this year, and they are an exciting group! We are so appreciative of our Facilitators for taking the time out of their busy lives to travel and facilitate $tart $mart workshops. Their passion and dedication to educating young women on pay equity is the heartbeat of our organization.

AAUW Montana is working with the Montana State University and the University of Montana to purchase a $tart $mart license for each campus in the university system. These schools will have unlimited access to the $tart $mart program for a 3 year period, giving thousands of students statewide the opportunity to learn about the gender wage gap and how to negotiate for fair and equitable salaries. This partnership between WAGE, AAUW and Montana state schools further enhances the Governor’s initiative to get all Montana residents paid fairly. How exciting to be part of this ground-breaking effort!

Work $mart Licenses Reach Into Community Organizations and State Government

WAGE trained over 40 Montana government and non-profit employees to facilitate Work $mart Salary Negotiation workshops across the state as part of the governor’s initiative. These Facilitators are hosting Work $mart workshops, helping their clients learn how to negotiate for raises and promotions.

The YWCA of Metropolitan Phoenix secured a 3 Year License to train working women in salary negotiation. Two million workers in Phoenix will have the opportunity to learn valuable information through $tart $mart and Work $mart.

Girl Scout Cornerstone, the young professional volunteers for the Girl Scouts of Oklahoma City, OK also has secured a 3 year license.

The University of Massachusetts at Lowell, in collaboration with the Boston office of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, conducted a Work $mart Alumnae workshop in June and will offer another in the fall for alumnae returning for class reunions.

Let’s Not Rest on Our Laurels

We trained over 100 new Facilitators this year and are poised to double our workshops with everyone’s help.

So for a few weeks, put your feet up, pat yourselves on the back, and then get out your calendars and start planning for next fall. Pomp and Circumstance may still be echoing on the breeze, but fall semester will be here in no time. Now is the time to get those workshops planned and promoted.

Over the summer as we work on updates and opportunities, we will keep you posted. Now is the time to send us any thoughts or suggestions you may have. Let us know what went really well for you and what might need some attention. We in the WAGE office are here to assist you.

Once again, our sincere thanks. Over 4000 campus women and men learned what it means to negotiate that first salary. Let’s see if we can double that number this coming academic year, and while we’re doing it, let’s pick up Alaska and South Dakota!

WAGE Page February 2014

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

WAGE Reaches a Milestone: A Presence on 400 campuses The WAGE Project has now facilitated workshops on 400 campuses in 48 state throughout the United States. The mix of campuses --60% universities; 25% colleges; 15% community colleges--demonstrates the value of the $tart $mart workshop--to every college woman today.

$tart $mart Licensees Demonstrate Potential to Reach Large Numbers of Coeds on Campus

Sixty colleges and universities have licenses to offer unlimited numbers of $tart $mart workshops on their campus over three years. Every six months, representatives of these licensees engage in a discussion to share their experiences and strategies to bring this workshop to as many women on their campus as possible.

Highlights from the discussion held in late January were:

Some schools have organized steering committees of $tart $mart participants, schedule monthly planning meetings to discuss the implementation of $tart $mart on their campus, and set a yearly schedule. Committees are made up of staff in Women’s Resource Centers, Career Services Offices and faculty from various departments and schools.. Each committee member takes on a specific responsibility eg. campus outreach, training and development, or workshop promotion. Schools find that pulling together people and resources across campus creates a bigger impact and a broader reach.

Licensees also reported that they are augmenting their workshops by offering workshops on interviewing skills and professional development in conjunction with the $tart $mart workshop.

Governor Bullock of Montana Takes Salary Negotiation for Women to a New Level

In late January, WAGE was invited by Governor Bullock’s staff to Montana to work with the Department of Labor and Industry [DOLI] and the Department of Administration as part of the Governor’s Equality Montana Initiative. The state plans to purchase licenses to offer salary negotiation workshops to working women statewide.

After meeting the governer, Annie Houle, WAGE National Director, then presented Work $mart for Department of Administration Program Managers, the Bureau Chief, Human Resource Administrators and key non-profit heads from across the state. The evaluations were excellent; the interchange of ideas and excitement, powerful. One woman wrote:

“I came in not knowing fully what the workshop was about and learned so much. Well prepared, well presented. I feel empowered and educated!”

In Bozeman, Annie Houle facilitated a $tart $mart Workshop underwritten by the local branch of the AAUW, to an enthusiastic crowd of women at Montana State University [MSU]. MSU will hold an Equal Pay Summit in April with Lilly Ledbetter, additional programming and another WAGE workshop.

WAGE is building a long term relationship with Montana. MSU and the AAUW are working with us to spread $tart $mart workshops across the state. With strong leadership and commitment to gender pay equity by the governor, Montana’s far-reaching initiatives could be a model for other states. We are thrilled to play a part in this. Stay tuned!

Work$mart/Work$mart Alumnae A Hit with Villanova School of Business and the Villanova Women's Professional Network

Working graduate students and alumnae attended a lively Work$mart workshop at Dougherty Hall on the Villanova campus on Sunday afternoon, Feb 2, facilitated by WAGE President Evelyn Murphy. With 97% of the participants indicating in their evaluations that they would approach opportunities for salary negotiation differently as a result of the workshop, one woman explained:

“The tools she gave us can apply to many aspects of my career,

and even my personal life. These pointers can help when asking for

a raise, added benefits, promotion, department switch, relocation,

involvement with extracurricular activities, etc. They are very versatile.

After attending this workshop, I am much more confident in approaching

my employer and am already working on preparing my pitch in the near future."

WAGE is working with the President of the Graduate Women in Business Committee at the Business School to combine a Work$mart/Work$mart Alumnae license with the $tart $mart license for the Villanova campus.

WAGE Page December 2013

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Thoughts at year end 2013

Last week, a study entitled “On Pay Gap, Millennial Women Near Parity—For Now”, issued by the highly regarded Pew Research Center, announced that women age 25-34 now earn a startling 93 cents for every dollar their male counterparts earn.

We at WAGE were thrilled with this news. For the last eight years, WAGE has facilitated $tart $mart workshops on hundreds of campuses throughout the United States. After several years offering the workshop mainly in the Northeast, in 2009 we created a partnership with the American Association of University Women (AAUW) to engage their members in recruiting campuses and facilitating $tart $mart workshops.

So, in classrooms with 20, 30 sometimes even 40 women, time and time again, we have taught these Millennial women how to negotiate to get paid fairly when they start working after graduation. We deliberately chose to conduct highly interactive, intensely interpersonal, eyeball-to-eyeball settings because we knew these workshops were about building self confidence, as well as teaching the techniques of negotiation.

Over eight years, led by a small WAGE team and the volunteer collaborators of AAUW, $tart $mart has helped tens of thousands of young women in 48 states learn to negotiate to get paid fairly. No doubt, this workshop has played some part in closing this gap for Millennial women.

We are also excited about the future potential impact of $tart $mart. Many campuses have chosen to purchase three year licenses to spread $tart $mart workshops throughout their various schools, departments, and offices for both graduate and undergraduate students. In all, enrollment on our licensees’ campuses is now over one million students! We have not only advanced the wage equity for today’s Millennial women workers but also, we have built the capacity to reach hundreds of thousands of Millennial women in the coming years.

To do so, we need your help. We realize that this is a time when all nonprofits appeal for donations and that we are probably among many requests that you face. We have a specific request. For years, we have kept the fee for $tart $mart at barebones minimum in order to reach as many young women as possible. That strategy worked in terms of contributing to the extraordinary progress in the wage gap that Millennial women made during the years that our workshop has been offered. Yet we cannot continue to offer this workshop incurring losses. The unsubsidized cost of the workshop and license is approximately $500 more than we now charge.

Our request is this: Please be responsible for giving or raising $100 for WAGE before this year ends. If you can write a check for the whole amount, wonderful. If you can find a friend to contribute half and you contribute half, wonderful. If you can find three friends and, along with yourself, each write $25 checks, wonderful, too; or 9 friends and yourself at $10! All contributors will be recognized on our website. Please make checks out to The WAGE Project, Inc. and mail to 148 Fuller Street, Brookline, MA 02446.

2013 has been a tremendous year for WAGE. Our core workshops--$tart $mart, Work $mart, Work $mart for Alumnae, and the Real Financial Literacy Project (for unemployed women) have received rave reviews from all participants. We are proud of our work and of our collaboration with you.

Happy Holiday wishes,

The WAGE team

Annie, Dorrie, Kristy and Evelyn

WAGE Page Fall 2013

Saturday, October 05, 2013

Hello WAGE friends and Supporters. Happy fall! We here at WAGE are having a successful start to the academic year. We are hosting our Salary Negotiation workshops in a wide range of venues. We continue to respond to requests for workshops for diverse audiences such as Work $mart for women veterans, Teen $mart developed for the mayor's office in Boston as an enrichment program for teen workers, Work $mart and Work $mart Alumnae, and, of course, $tart $mart. For a full listing of scheduled workshops for academic year 2013-2014, please visit the WAGE website www.wageproject.org or contact Dorrie Sieburg dorriesieburg@gmail.com.

$tart $mart

We are on track to offer a record number of workshops on campuses this academic year with 68 workshops already set for the fall— a 20% increase over last fall. Our goal is to have 200 workshops hosted this year, and we are optimistic that we will meet, or even exceed, this number as spring is prime time for $tart $mart on campuses.

We now have 57 schools with 3 Year Licenses. This fall we have hosted two informative conference calls with these schools to gain their feedback on $tart $mart implementation on their campuses. The 3 Year Licensed schools were able to network with one another to learn how they are structuring and administering the program at their respective schools.

In recent months, $tart $mart has swept the “heartland” of our country with wonderful workshops and facilitator trainings in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. We are in conversation with Arkansas and hope to see more workshops coming out of this wonderful area in the spring. If you live in this region and have contacts or suggestions of schools that might be interested, please let us know.

Work $mart Alumnae

This summer, after announcing our new workshop, Work $mart Alumnae (W$A), WAGE will introduce W$A at the University of Massachusetts Lowell on November 7th under the sponsorship of the Chancellor's office and Morgan Stanley. Plans are in process for similar workshops on campuses in Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. If you would like to schedule a Work $mart Alumnae workshop, please contact Dorrie Sieburg dorriesieburg@gmail.com.

The City of Boston

In January, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced in his State of the City Address an initiative to ensure that working women in Boston are paid fairly. WAGE licensed its Work $mart workshop to the City and trained facilitators, many of whom have been conducting extensive Work $mart workshops throughout the summer and fall of 2013. Community organizations collaborating with the City have also hosted workshops. Boston's approach to eliminating the gender wage gap by giving working women the tools and confidence to negotiate for fair pay is a model for the rest of the country.

WAGE's contribution to advancing the salaries of working women in Boston was acknowledged by Mayor Menino at a press conference on October 31st, and he signed the Boston Women's Compact , a pledge by major employers to address the gender wage gap among their employees.

The Real Financial Literacy Program (RFLP)

From March through November, WAGE and Self Esteem Boston (SEB) provided a 10 hour Real Financial Literacy Program for unemployed women at career centers in metropolitan Boston and for women veterans at the Veterans Hospital in Jamaica Plain, MA. SEB facilitated the first 6 hours of self-confidence building, followed by a WAGE-facilitated workshop on budgeting and money management while unemployed and salary negotiation for the next job.

Every woman in these workshops reported gaining self-confidence and the skills to get paid fairly. A team of public health professors/researchers is exploring federal research and demonstration funds to support adding these workshops to traditional unemployment services.

Work $mart for Architects in New York City

In October, WAGE conducted two Work $mart workshops for the newly formed ArchiteXX, an advocacy group to advance professional women architects. The sponsor wrote afterward "it was incredible and I have had so much positive--even ecstatic—responses from the events."

MBA Women International Leadership Conference

WAGE President Evelyn Murphy gave a keynote address to MBA Women International Leadership Conference on October 3, 2013. 600 professionals from throughout the country attended this, the largest organization for women MBAs.

Women's Toolbox Annual Conference

In mid-October, Murphy gave a keynote address to women small business owners and entrepreneurs at the Women's Toolbox Annual Conference, Endicott College, Beverly MA. Her address applied WAGE's salary negotiation fundamentals to fees and billing rates so that women entrepreneurs will to get paid fairly.

CML Conference for Women

In October, Annie Houle, WAGE National Director, reunited with Jessica Bennett, author of the NY Times article on $tart $mart, at the Conference for Insurance Claims, Management and Litigators in New York City. Annie and Jessica held a "Fireside" chat for the 200 women attending.

Carpe Diem!

If you have been trained as a facilitator in the past but have not yet used that training to recruit or host a workshop, make this academic year “your year.” With more and more attention drawn to the WAGE gap via books and newspaper articles, this is an opportune time to jump in and help graduating women get paid fairly.

If you feel you need a refresher course or tutoring, please contact Dorrie Sieburg and she will get you the assistance you need. Our updated materials make the workshop even more compelling and fun.

Workshop Support

WAGE staff is always available to help as you develop your workshop materials. Because of the high number of workshops scheduled, we do ask that you notify us at least 3 weeks prior to your event if you need assistance in writing your materials.

Newly Updated $tart $mart Workshop Materials

Over the summer we made changes to our $tart $mart workshop materials in order to improve the flow of slides in the power point and to add the new AAUW logo. Changes were made to the power point, the student workbook, the script, and the marketing materials. On December 1st, all the newly updated materials will be posted on the WAGE Website www.wageproject.org under the Facilitator Log-in. It is fine to use the old materials now but please use the new materials after December 1st. If you have questions about the workshop, contact Dorrie Sieburg dorriesieburg@gmail.com.

Remember, please inform WAGE of any workshops you have scheduled, even if you do not need our assistance. We post all workshops on both the WAGE and AAUW websites and keep a tally of all workshops hosted per year. Thank you!